Should children be given less freedom: the issue

A+mother+scolding+her+daughter.

A mother scolding her daughter.

Many children around the world, especially in Western countries such as the United States and West European countries, experience the freedom that adults receive to a certain extent in the household. 

The idea behind the approach to more free children is that the previous generation of children received substantially more freedom than today. This allowed them to naturally explore their creative premises and experience cause and consequence. 

Today, children are being told how to do everything, with all sorts of rules present to shape them into who their parents want them to be. Despite the fact that this prevents children from accessing dangerous media regardless of the internet or in real life, it also prevents them from obtaining knowledge in their own interests. 

According to Parenting for Brain, children who receive such strict methods of parenting not only are more susceptible to rebellion and substance abuse but also receive no positive benefits when they are exposed to these methods. 

The idea behind strict parenting is that the children stay away from dangerous or reckless behavior, but the psychological message sent to the child when they are being relentlessly scolded by their parents makes them believe that, to an extent, they do not matter. 

Despite the children that are put under strict conditions appearing to be more behaved, the nature of strict parenting actually does something else. Children realize that they just need to appear good, appear what their parents want them to be, and they will be left alone. 

However, appearing good is nowhere near close to achieving the parents’ goals, it just makes them think it has been achieved. This causes the children to be more sneaky with their misbehavior, and they simply conceal their actions rather than show them. 

As a result, these children are actually likely to be more misbehaving due to their experience of being sneaky as well as their distrust towards their own parents. However disrespectful this might seem, for a child to distrust their parents it is important to consider that the parents in question are constantly scolding their children and use hurtful words towards them as a form of discipline. 

In reality, this is not an over-exaggeration of the situation and the children have all the reasons to not open up to overly-strict parents. When parenting a child, it is important to have rules in the home to maintain discipline, but it is also important to not overdo them, see situations through the perspective of the children, and speak to them calmly about the issue.